


Hogwarts Express (Rey & Finn)

by OptimisticBeth



Series: Sorted [3]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Age Changes, Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Cats, Friendship, Gen, Gryffindor vs. Slytherin Rivalry, Hogwarts Express, Male-Female Friendship, One Shot, Rivalry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-04-13 22:18:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14122023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OptimisticBeth/pseuds/OptimisticBeth
Summary: Muggle-raised Rey is excited to hop on the Hogwarts Express and get carted off to the life she is sure will lead to her parents. As the train takes off, two feisty felines get into a fight, one of them jumps into Rey's arms, and Rey does something very brave yet dangerous because of course she does, it's Rey.





	Hogwarts Express (Rey & Finn)

Rey felt utter exhilaration as she followed Professor Tano to the appropriate train platform.

A _witch_. She was a witch! It made so much sense now, why her parents had never been able to find her, had never come to take her out of that dreadful orphanage. They didn’t know how to find her in the… what had Professor Tano called it? The “Muggle” world. But now…

Rey began to skip along behind the elderly woman, gaze fixed to the back of her head and the long white hair bound in two tails and threaded with blue ribbons so that it looked like candy cane stripes among the white.

 _Now_ her parents would find her.  _Now_ her life would begin.

“Just a few more minutes,” said an elegant woman who stood next to a broad brick column. She had greying brown hair caught up in a braid on her head. She reached up to brush her son’s thick black hair away from his face, even though it looked perfect.

He scowled and pulled away. “Stop,” he muttered. The boy was older than Rey and taller than his five-foot mother. He had a smooth pale face, long and narrow, with a smattering of small moles and a nose that would be prominent if it got any bigger.

Professor Tano stopped when she saw the pair. “Leia?”

The elegant woman turned, brown eyes widening. The boy with her glanced their way as well, but his scowl remained even as his mother’s face broke into a welcoming smile.

“Ahsoka! Good heavens, how are you?” The two women hugged the way that close acquaintances hug – not too tight, not too long, but with raw emotion and genuine pleasure.

“I’m fine, fine,” said Professor Tano, her blue eyes shining. “Escorting a new student to the train.”

Rey waved awkwardly as three pairs of eyes turned to her. “Hi!”

The boy rolled his eyes, but his mother smiled. “Hello. Your first time on the Hogwarts Express?”

Rey beamed back, bouncing on her toes. Not even the sullen boy could dull her good mood. “Yes. I’m Rey.”

“Nice to meet you, Rey. I’m Leia, and this is my son, Ben.” Leia sent her son a sharp look, and he pulled himself away from the wall to shake Rey’s hand.

He had a firm grip and mediocre posture. His big brown eyes met Rey’s, his gaze startlingly intense, then skated away the moment their hands dropped. “Can we go now?” he asked his mother in a voice that seemed too deep for his age. Rey prided herself on pinning down age pretty quickly, but his height and voice made it difficult. Based on his face alone, she would have guessed thirteen.

Leia bit her lip and glanced around as if looking for someone. She sighed. “I suppose Han can find us on the platform.”

Ben snorted irritably and grabbed his cart, ignoring Rey as he lined it up to face the pillar.

“Watch,” said Leia. “You just push your cart straight at that spot and…”

Ben started forward and disappeared through the bricks as if they weren’t even there.

“Voila,” Leia finished.

Rey swallowed. Was  _she_ supposed to do that?

Professor Tano’s hand rested on her shoulder, and Rey looked up into the old woman’s sun-browned face. “You’ll be fine. We’ll be right behind.”

Rey lined her cart up, trying to copy the way Ben had done it, and charged the pillar with a little shriek.

“Whoa,” she said when she found herself in a completely different place, and surprisingly  _not_ smashed against the pillar’s bricks.

The boy named Ben jerked his chin at her, leaning on his cart handle where he waited for his mother. “Out of the way. You’ll get run over.”

Rey obliged, moving forward to continue staring at the beautiful red steam train with the words “Hogwarts Express” printed boldly along the side. Students and parents were everywhere, chatting and hugging friends they hadn’t seen all summer. Some had pet cages with cats or owls in them.

Professor Tano placed a gentle hand on Rey’s shoulder, her own eyes glinting with memories. “I remember my first time on Platform 9¾.”

“Don’t we all,” said Leia, gazing at the train. “I met Ben’s father on my first trip to Hogwarts.”

Ben groaned as if he’d heard this story before and hated it, but Rey was fascinated.

“He and my brother, Luke, burst into my compartment like two men on a mission. They were searching for Han’s missing owl and dragged me along to help them find it. Turned out it wasn’t missing at all. Han had won it in a card game and the owner — you remember Lando, don’t you, Ahsoka? — had hidden it to avoid paying up.”

“Oh, I remember. Han and Lando were the banes of every teacher at Hogwarts until they pulled one too many stunts.” She slid a glance Leia’s way. “I remember they got you and your brother into plenty of trouble as well.”

Leia only smiled, her gaze misty. Rey could tell that she was somewhere far away and long ago.

“Did you fall in love right away?” asked Rey quietly, unable to bite her curiosity back.

“Well, no,” admitted Leia. “I was only eleven. And even when I did fall in love with him, I made him work for it. Han was too full of himself.”

“Still is,” said Professor Tano, and Rey wasn’t sure if it was because she was old or because they were friends or if it was a shared joke, but Leia only smiled.

Rey didn’t know how to tell because she had never been part of a joke before, except as the target.

“Now stop giving the girl ideas, Leia,” Professor Tano warned. To Rey, she said, “You focus on your studies, not on boys.”

Rey only grinned. “Oh, don’t worry. I’m a sucker for happy endings, but I’m not interested in boys. They’re stupid.”

“Nobody asked you,” Ben muttered.

Rey looked at him and felt embarrassed. She’d forgotten he was there, and then she’d called him stupid.

Boys  _were_  stupid, but it was rude to say so in front of one. Every boy Rey had ever encountered had been stupid in some way. Some were dumb, some were mean, and some would steal anything left unsecured. And the boys who weren’t any of those things needed to be protected. Rey could only protect herself, so she’d had to watch the weak boys bullied by the tougher, meaner kids.

She’d always felt relieved when those boys got placed into foster care or adopted.

Not that Rey envied them. She’d fought tooth and nail, sabotaging more than one adoption meeting — Plutt had pulled his hair out over her, claiming she had the looks and the temperament for adoption if she’d just behave — because if she left the orphanage, how would her parents find her?

“Help Rey get settled on the train, dear,” said Leia, clearly not appreciating her son’s muttering.

Ben shot his mother an incredulous look.

“I don’t want to impose,” said Rey quickly. She could get herself on the train, had been taking care of herself for years. It wouldn’t be a problem.

“No imposition, dear,” said Leia, and the look she angled on Ben made him duck his head and look at his shoes. “That includes her trunk, Benjamin.”

His mouth twisted, and he nodded. “Okay.”

“Wow,” said Rey as she grabbed one end of her trunk and Ben grabbed the other. “Your mom is…”

He sighed, not looking at her. “Yeah.”

“Is she always that…”

He did look at her then. “Intense? Bossy? Terrifying?” He pressed his full lips together and nodded.

“Wow,” she said again, but it came out wistful this time. She looked toward his mother. Leia kept an eye on them as she spoke to a few other parents.

When Rey stumbled, she focused on the task at hand, and they managed to get her single trunk up the train steps without mishap. She didn’t own much – a doll she’d made out of an ugly old sweater, a dingy knit ear-flap cap someone had donated to the orphanage, and a few clothing items – but her schoolbooks made the trunk unwieldy enough that it would have been annoying to manage on her own.

Professor Tano had taken her through an alley of  _marvels_ the day before and assured her that the school had set aside funds to assist students who couldn’t buy their own supplies, though this also meant that Rey’s books and robes were secondhand. Still, she’d been able to throw on the school uniform’s blouse and skirt that morning so that no one found out how threadbare all her own things were, and looking around at the other students and how well she seemed to fit in… a thrill went down her spine.

“Find an empty one,” Ben said, checking out compartments as they manipulated her luggage past all the students clogging the train corridor. A voice from behind Ben made them stop and set the trunk down long enough to be greeted.

“Solo! Good to see you again.” The speaker was a tall, thin red-haired boy in black robes and a green tie. “Who is this?” He turned blue eyes on Rey, and she suppressed the urge to step behind Ben.

Instead, she held out a hand and pasted a smile on her face. She said, “I’m Rey,” at the same time that Ben said, “She’s nobody.”

The other boy shook her hand with a smirk. “Well, Rey-nobody, I’m Armitage Hux. If you’re in this gloomy prick’s company, I’m sure you’re good people. Maybe. Probably.”

Rey grinned. “Thanks. I guess.” Something orange and sleek slinked against Hux’s ankles, and Rey’s eyes grew. “Oh! I love your cat!” She started to crouch and reach out, but Ben grabbed her wrist.

When she glanced up at him, he released her and muttered, “Trust me. She’s hellspawn.”

“Nonsense,” said Hux, lifting the beautiful creature into his arms and stroking her silky head. “Millicent is an angel.” Millicent purred her agreement. “Will you be joining us in Slytherin, then, Rey-nobody?”

Rey felt nervousness chase away her smile. “What’s Slytherin?”

Hux’s own smile evaporated, and his eyebrows rose coldly. “Muggleborn, then?”

Rey shrugged. Probably not, but she couldn’t be sure. Muggle  _raised_ for sure.

Hux sneered, but for some reason he targeted it more at the boy with her than at Rey. “Showing mudbloods around now, are you, Solo? I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised – considering your  _father_. Didn’t notice him on the platform, by the way. Too busy to see you off? Again?”

Ben stepped into Hux, using his superior height to intimidate in a way Rey had seen often among the other orphans. They’d learned not to try it on  _her_ , but that didn’t mean it wasn’t painfully common. “I didn’t see your mother, either,” he said in a soft voice like dark velvet. “My father might be a bastard, but I, myself, am not.” A pause, and his next words fell with deliberate cruelty. “Can you say the same?” He stepped back, leaving Hux’s face red and twisted with fury. In a normal voice, he said, “Be careful who you prod,  _Armitage,”_  and turned to walk away, picking up his side of Rey’s trunk and leaving her to hurriedly grab the other end.

Ben glanced in compartments until he found one he liked, wherein he opened the door to gesture her inside. It was empty. Rey entered and glanced over her shoulder at him.

“You’ll be alright in here.” The impossible fullness of his lips disappeared as he pressed them together. “Goodbye, then.”

He shut the door and walked away, leaving Rey completely and achingly alone.

* * *

 

Finn arrived to Platform 9¾ late and rushed to get his things on board. The conductor assisted him, along with an elderly woman who turned out to be much stronger than she looked, and then he was left to himself to find a compartment.

But they were all full.

And he didn’t know anyone.

So he sat despondently on his trunk in the corridor until a commotion the next car over caught his attention.

He stood, trying to see what was happening, when an orange and white streak zipped past him, a second orange streak on its heels as terrifying yowls filled the air over the noise of the train starting to move.

Finn stumbled back, glancing after the blurs as a brown-haired Third Year barreled down the same path as the – cats? – and skidded to a stop before he knocked Finn over.

“Did you see–?”

Finn pointed in the general direction of the next car, and the boy gave him a grin and a wink.

“Thanks. And if you see a red-haired asshole about yea tall, send him in the wrong direction, would you?” The boy dropped his hand, which he’d held several inches above his own head, and jogged off the way Finn had pointed. Before he exited the train car, however, he slowed to call over his shoulder, “I’m Poe, by the way!”

Finn watched him go, bemused, and had just resumed his seat on his trunk when a tallish boy with red hair and a pinched expression hurried his way.

“Have you seen a purebred ginger Turkish Angora?”

Finn blinked up at him. What was a Turkish Angora? “Huh?”

The boy glowered at Finn. “A cat,” he bit out succinctly.

“Oh,” said Finn. Deciding that he didn’t like the way this boy sneered down at him, Finn shrugged. “Nope.”

The boy cursed, turned on his heel, and marched away.

Finn decided to keep looking for an empty compartment. He decided to drag his trunk the way the boy Poe had gone, and he’d checked around ten compartments before he encountered anyone else.

Or, rather, the red-haired boy again. This time, he had some friends with him, both of whom were far too tall and dressed in Slytherin green beneath their robes.

The trio stopped, giving their leader a moment to look down his nose at Finn. “You. Did you lie to me?”

“No,” Finn blustered, but then the boy behind the other two, a boy with pale skin and longish dark hair, rolled his eyes and flicked his wand.

“ _Legilimens_.”

Finn felt a strange pulling sensation behind his eyes. The memory of the cats rushing past and Poe thanking him appeared sharp and clear in Finn’s mind, then faded.

A dull headache took over as the spellcaster gestured blandly down the corridor. “They went that way.”

Cold blue eyes turned on Finn, and he shrank back against the corridor wall. “I won’t forget this,” the red-haired boy hissed. He waved for his friends to follow and said, “This is why we keep you around, Solo,” as the trio continued past.

* * *

Rey had no idea where the cats had come from, but she couldn’t bring herself to care when her arms were full of soft purring feline.

The cat was extremely fat, with a small round head and an almost perfectly round body, but it wasn’t too heavy. It kept nuzzling up under her chin, and Rey felt herself falling hard and fast for the little butterball.

The  _other_ cat, which Rey recognized as the elegant creature she’d met when she and Ben encountered Hux, sat staring at them with narrowed golden eyes, tail twitching.

“I keep telling you – you need to put a tracking charm on her collar.”

“You know as well as I do that tracking charms are a pain to keep up.”

Rey looked up at the voices at her door, which she’d left open in hopes that someone would join her in the empty compartment. It was the same reason the cats had invaded, she supposed.

Hux paused in the doorway, gaze locked on the cat in Rey’s arms before entering to pick up his own pet. “There you are,” he murmured to Millicent, who curled her long-furred tail gracefully around her haunches as he lifted her. Her pink tongue darted out to lick the back of one paw, the gesture as dismissive as it was cute. She acted for all the world as if she hadn’t just been glaring at the creature in Rey’s arms with patient hatred.

Two tall figures entered behind Hux – an imposing blonde girl and… Ben Solo. He’d changed into his school clothes, and his tie was the same green as the others wore. He met Rey’s eyes with a frown and, to her surprise, didn’t look away.

“Makes sense,” said Hux snippily. “A mongrel  _would_ find another mongrel.”

Rey tore her gaze from Ben’s to glance at Hux. “I thought you two weren’t friends?”

Hux raised a disdainful brow. “We’re Slytherin. We don’t  _have_ to be friends to work together.”

 

Ben shrugged.

A handsome boy stormed into the compartment, making it actually quite crowded, and shoved past Hux to get to Rey. “BeeBee!” he cried, relieved, and the pile of fuzzy love in Rey’s arms hopped into his outstretched ones.

To Rey, he said, “Thanks. I’m Poe.You must be a Gryffindor if BeeBee likes you.”

Rey blinked, smiled, and decided not to ask what a Gryffindor was. She’d already been burnt on her ignorance once, and she wanted to fit in.

“You,” Poe said in a completely different tone of voice, rounding on Hux, “keep your mangy monster away from my cat!”

Hux tilted his head back, his lips curling with disgust. “Mangy! Millicent is a purebred Turkish Angora of the finest pedigree; she possesses the most noble of feline lineages; you should be thanking your stars that you’re allowed to breathe the same  _air_ as her—”

Poe leaned forward, holding his own cat protectively. “Mangy. Beast,” he bit out.

Out came the wands — first Hux, then Poe, then the blonde girl. Ben held his loosely, not pointing it at anyone but obviously ready. Rey didn’t bother. She didn’t know how to use a wand. If someone needed saving, she could fight better without some weird magic twig.

BeeBee hopped from Poe’s arms to Rey’s, and Millicent stirred in interest during the transition. She slunk from Hux’s cradling arm and onto the train seat as if she expected BeeBee to run away again.

Poe cast at the same time as Hux shouted, “Levicorpus!”

Poe’s spell was deflected by the large blonde girl, and Hux’s narrowly missed Poe when the latter threw himself onto one of the seats in a hasty dodge. Unfortunately, with Poe out of the way, the spell went straight for Rey—

–and hit BeeBee, who meowed plaintively as his back feet shot into the air and floated him out of Rey’s arms — and straight out the compartment’s open window.

Everyone froze, staring at the window, until Rey scrambled onto a seat and stuck her head outside. The others surrounded her, vying to see as the sharp wind whipped Rey’s hair around her face.

“I see him!” she shouted over the roar in her ears. “He’s okay, just stuck on something.” She could see the cat meowing, his front paws wrapped desperately around a jutting handle as his back feet kicked at the air.

Rey didn’t need to think for more than a second. She pushed herself up and wriggled out the window in a maneuver no one else in that room was small enough to manage.

Clinging to the outside was more difficult, but it wouldn’t be long before BeeBee lost his grip, and Rey excelled at climbing things. True, those things weren’t usually  _moving_  when she climbed them, but she knew how to find finger and toeholds even on smooth surfaces like this.

“Are you  _crazy_?!” Poe yelled at her from inside. She saw Ben just behind him, mouth turned down into an alarmed frown. His friends tugged at his sleeve, saying something to him.

“Go open the windows on the other compartments so I’ll have handholds!” she yelled back, thinking that maybe she should have climbed out a little closer to the distressed cat.

Too late now. Rey put all doubts out of her mind and focused on her task.

At the next window, which Poe had dutifully opened, curious faces pressed against the glass. Rey ignored them, edging ever closer to poor BeeBee.

“It’s okay,” she called. “You’re okay. I’m coming.”

At the next compartment, the window was nothing but faces, everyone trying to get a look at the crazy girl edging along the side of the train.

A bump on the track made Rey lose a foothold, and everyone gasped, but she used her arms and other foot to brace herself as she found a new one and continued onward.

No time for fear. BeeBee’s paws were slipping.

“I’m coming! Almost there! Hold on a little longer!”

Once Rey found herself close enough to reach for the cat, she began to panic at the realization that her arms weren’t long enough. He was too far above her.

“Up it is,” she muttered to herself, jaw firming with determination. She gripped the top of the window with her fingertips, finding places to cling that shouldn’t have worked, should have sent her spinning and tumbling from the smooth side of the train.

A challenge. Rey grinned, adrenaline rushing through her, and she fought steadily higher, her eyes locked on BeeBee’s terrified ones until her backmost toes curled over the window’s open edge.

Almost. Just… a little… further…

Rey shifted her foot, seeking the extra height tiptoes would provide, and made a grab for the floating feline.

Rey caught BeeBee by an arm just before her back foot started to slip.

For a sickening moment, Rey thought she was going to fall, but something, maybe a strong gust of wind, pushed her flat against the train car as a dark head popped into view above her.

Someone was on the roof.

The boy, dark-skinned and handsome in a boy-next-door way, stretched his hand down to Rey. She still felt the bracing pressure at her back and took a chance, releasing her grip so she could desperately clasp the offered hand.

Between the boy pulling and Rey scrambling her feet into footholds, she and BeeBee both safely made it atop the Hogwarts Express.

The two of them sat for a moment, and then he turned to her. “I’m Finn.”

Rey grinned and wrapped her arms tight around the cat, determined not to let the poor shaking creature float off again.“Rey. This is BeeBee.”

“You’re insane,” said Finn with a grimace. “What were you thinking, putting yourself in danger like that? Your cat would have been fine, someone would have found him and gotten him back to you, he has a collar for  _exactly_ that reason!”

“Finished?” Rey asked. She found the ladder he’d used to get on top of the train, the descent easy even with BeeBee’s claws digging into her, but something mischievous made Rey look up as she drew even with the roof. Over the noise of the train and the wind in her ears, she yelled, “He’s not my cat!” and laughed at his expression the rest of the way down.

* * *

Once Rey deposited poor traumatized BeeBee into Poe’s arms, she found herself swarmed by admirers, making her flush with a mixture of embarrassment and pride. Finn, who entered behind her, received his share of the praise, and she thought she saw his ears redden at the attention.

BeeBee, it seemed, was a popular cat.

A Fifth Year in a red and gold tie undid the spell on the poor cat and gave him a few sympathy head scritches. Then, once BeeBee had been properly soothed, Poe detached Rey and Finn from the crowd and guided the two of them back to Rey’s compartment, where Rey closed the window so hard it rattled.

“The Slytherins took off after you climbed out — didn’t want to be in the vicinity if you  _died_ or something.” Poe’s words were like acid, burning through everything they touched, but Rey didn’t let it bother her. She’d seen worse than kids running to avoid getting in trouble, and so she only felt mildly disappointed in Ben Solo.

She knew his mother wouldn’t have approved.

Finn, it turned out, was also a First Year and very nervous about the sorting. When Rey admitted she didn’t know what a sorting was, they told her all about the Houses and the Sorting Hat and the start of year feast afterward.

“There’s treacle tart and plum pudding and pumpkin juice,” Poe rhapsodized. “Cornish pasties, shepherd’s pie, lamb chops… Whole platters full.”

Rey couldn’t picture it. That much food seemed unreal after years of the stingy portions available at Plutt’s table. “How much can we have?” she asked, biting her lip because it seemed too good to be true.

“As much as you want,” said Poe with a casual shrug, and it was that — the promise of as much food as she could eat — which broke Rey.

The boys tried to comfort her when she buried her face in her hands and began to weep, but they were boys and therefore bad at it. Not their fault, really, that they were boys, and so Rey let them pat her back awkwardly until the most surprising thing happened — a  _boy_  made it all better.

True, that boy was a cat, but Rey was in a generous mindset as he crawled from Poe’s lap to hers with a plaintive meow and a comforting set of purrs.

His tail tickled Rey’s face, making her laugh, and her tears switched off as quickly as they’d begun. Rey sat back and listened for the rest of the train ride to Poe’s Hogwarts stories as she stroked BeeBee with long pets meant to comfort the animal but which managed to comfort her, as well.

**Author's Note:**

> First Years: Rey (12), Finn (12), Rose (11)  
> Second Years: Paige (12)  
> Third Years: Poe (13), Ben (13), Hux (13)  
> Professors Thus Far: Ahsoka Tano (72), Biggs (HP Canon)
> 
> Due to this story bringing characters together at an earlier time in their lives, while everyone is still deciding who they are, character progress will be _influenced by_ but _different than_ canon Star Wars. Fair warning.
> 
> If you haven’t read my previous crossover drabble, you will find more Hux vs Poe in "[Selected Letters from Hogwarts (Rose & Paige)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14095359)."
> 
> I vaguely recall reading that Oscar Isaac has chemistry with _everyone_. Poe certainly does, so I’ve tried to put that quality into his character here.
> 
> I hope I managed to convey a young, pre-fitness Ben Solo. (I do _not_ intend to wax rhapsodic about how one day he comes back to school all ripped and everyone drowns in their own drool. This is not that kind of story.)
> 
> I don’t plan to rush into any romance, especially considering everyone’s ages, and I will probably remain canon-adjacent when I do.
> 
> Look up Turkish Angora. It’s basically what Hux would be if he were a cat. It’s a _fancy_ cat.


End file.
